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Theatre Symposiums

The Reed Special Programs office makes available to area high school students and teachers complimentary tickets on designated dates for both the fall and spring faculty-directed Theatre Department productions at the Reed Studio Theatre in our new Performaning Arts Building.

Directly following the production, the department offers a “talk back” of the play to the high school students and faculty in attendance. The discussion lasts between 15 and 20 minutes and includes the faculty director, as well as members of the cast and technical crew.

We strongly encourage teachers to accompany their students and ask that teachers make all reservations. Schools are limited initially to 20 student tickets, plus teachers. Please contact the performing arts events manager, Sarah Dodson, by email at dodsons@reed.edu or by calling 503-517-4185 to reserve tickets. Seating is limited due to the small size of the facility. Reservations are on a first-come, first-served basis and should be made only for the number of students and teachers who are certain to attend.

2013-14 Productions

To inaugurate the opening of Reed’s new Performing Arts Building, we present one of America’s great classic plays, a plea for awareness of the beauty of the everyday in our community and our larger world. When stripped of its cultural baggage, Wilder’s play is elegant in its simplicity, lyrical in its meditation on living life in the moment. The occasion of this Our Town is a celebration: on one level, of our new gorgeous laboratory for making theatre at Reed, and on another, of Wilder’s mandate for all of us to wake up. On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the play, Reed Theatre proposes the opportunity to re-see the play that we all think we know from high school productions and pop culture references. In the words of playwright Donald Margulies, “Welcome—or welcome back—to Our Town.”

What happens when a charismatic figure rises to power? What happens when that figure is gone? In a play full of ambiguities and intricacies of character and relationship, Shakespeare shapes historical events for his own dramatic purposes. This production, set in a Rock 'n' Roll Rome, investigates the "star power" of Caesar.